India has launched its first Government-to-business portal to provide a round-the-clock, secure, one-stop-shop for all investment and business related information.

“This mission mode project will mark a paradigm shift in the Government’s approach to providing G2B services for India’s investor and business communities,” Commerce & Industry Minister Anand Sharma said while launching the eBiz portal at the CII Partnership Summit in Agra on Monday. The portal has been developed by Infosys in a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model.

India ranks a poor 132nd among 185 countries in the International Finance Corporation’s Ease of Doing Business index. Smaller countries, including Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal have ranked higher in the index.

To improve the business environment, an online single window was conceptualised in the form of the eBiz mission mode project under the National eGovernance Plan so as to enable businesses and investors to save time and costs.

“The project aims to create a business and investor-friendly ecosystem in India by making all business and investment related regulatory services across Central, State and local Governments available on a single portal, thereby obviating the need for an investor or a business to visit multiple offices or a plethora of Web sites.”

The Minister said the core value of the transformational project lies in a shift in the Government’s service delivery approach from being department-centric to customer-centric. eBiz will create a 24x7 facility for information and services and will also offer joined-up services where a single application submitted by a customer for a number of permissions, clearances, approvals and registrations will be routed automatically across multiple governmental agencies in a logical manner.

An inbuilt payment gateway will also add value by allowing all payments to be collected at one point and then apportioned, split and routed to the respective heads of account of Central/ State/ Para-statal agencies along with generation of challans and MIS reports.

“This payment gateway is the first of its kind designed in India and can become a universal payment gateway for all eGovernance applications,” Sharma added.